Editorial: House opts for revenue before reform

Faced with a growing budget gap and an electorate fed up with business as usual on Beacon Hill, the House this week voted for higher taxes to pay for more business as usual.

Faced with a growing budget gap and an electorate fed up with business as usual on Beacon Hill, the House this week voted for higher taxes to pay for more business as usual.

Gov. Deval Patrick promised to veto the 1.25-cent increase in the sales tax, pointing to list of reforms he says should come before any broad-based tax increase. It includes fixing the pension system, which seems to generate a new scandal every week, and ethics reform, which the Senate has yet to take up despite the indictment last fall of two of its members.

Then there's transportation, which inspired the "reform before revenue" mantra on Beacon Hill. Both houses have passed transportation bills, but their reforms are unconvincing and the savings they would generate are negligible. Nor do they deliver relief from future increases in Pike tolls or MBTA fares. That was to come when the Legislature takes up the revenue side of the transportation issue, including an increase in the gas tax large enough to close a funding gap that was obvious long before the recession shrunk state revenues.

But the House has now taken the gas tax off the table. Instead, it proposes that $275 million from the $900 million the sales tax hike is projected to generate be set aside for transportation. That's simply not enough to rescue two transportation agencies teetering on the edge of bankruptcy or to get caught up with the backlog of infrastructure repairs, let alone take Big Dig bond payments off the backs of Pike tollpayers.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo's sales tax increase would provide $200 million for the local aid account. But the House has refused, so far, to consider Patrick's proposals to give cities and towns new options for raising revenue on their own or to close a century-old loophole that lets some telecommunications companies escape paying millions in local property taxes.

The way DeLeo handled the sales tax increase shows that reform is still a foreign language in the House of Representatives. DeLeo had promised a free and open debate on any broad-based tax increases, but instead he pulled a typical Beacon Hill power-play. DeLeo's proposal was announced in the Globe Monday morning - Patrick said he first heard about it Sunday night, lest anyone think the state's top Democrats were actually working together.

There was no public hearing on a proposal that could have a large impact on the state's economy, and no time for representatives to hear from their constituents on it. Instead, Democrats were herded into a closed-door caucus for a discussion that should have been open to the tax-paying public. The House did some minor business, then recessed for more than four hours, presumably so leadership could twist more arms. Just before 11 p.m., less than 24 hours after they heard of the proposal, representatives made their decision.

The House's small contingent of Republicans unanimously voted against the proposal, along with a few Democrats, but it passed 108-51, barely enough to override Patrick's promised veto. Almost all MetroWest Democrats voted in favor, with the exception of two reform-minded members who have shown a willingness to buck DeLeo: Rep. Jennifer Callahan of Sutton and Rep. Tom Stanley of Waltham.

The state's budget situation is indeed dire, and new revenue will have to be part of the solution. But credibility is also in short supply on Beacon Hill, and this week's antics only underline that deficit. House leaders haven't made the case for a tax increase, in part because they only way they know how to do business is through backroom deals and closed-door debates. Don't expect the public's backing when you haven't invited them into the discussion.

A financial crisis provides an opportunity for reform, but House leaders aren't taking it. Instead, they are asking us to pay more money to support their status quo. This time, we aren't going along.

The MetroWest Daily News

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